mike carey

No problems, I suspected that might have been what happened. I was talking about profits in the context of government services that are tendered out to private companies or the entities providing them are privatised.

@bigjoey my comment that you quoted was about things like medicare, health care and public transport. If governments are providing or managing these as essential services, they have a responsibility to ensure that an appropriate level of service is provided, whether by regulation or subsidy, and to prevent providers from trimming service levels. I had made a distinction between them and purely commercial services like airlines. I have no argument with you that airlines trim services (and inclusions) to boost profits. In the US, paying extra for baggage, meals etc has become the new normal, with some of them now creating new cabins to enable you to rent a seat with enough room for your legs. Thankfully, they use the yield management algorithms on those seats as well, so you can sometimes find them at a lower price than you would pay for a late notice cattle class seat.

You highlight an important issue, for what things is the outcome that society expects 'making profits' rather than 'delivering the service'? Arguably for air transport, profit may be an acceptable outcome in which society may set limits about what is acceptable in delivering the service that generates the profits. Think safety regulations, customer rights (not just those illustrated in this instance, but also something like the Australian law that mandates 'total price' advertising - they aren't allowed to say 'plus taxes and fees' or the like). For some other things, like Medicare, health care, and I would argue public transit, the outcome should be a reasonable service at an affordable cost (to the user or to society/government). Companies should not have the social licence, much less the legal authority, to use their algorithms to avoid providing services that affect their profits. Obviously they need to cover costs, but I don't see 'for profit' as the optimum basis for delivering the services. Nothing wrong with for-profits running them, but they need to be subject to tight regulation. Trimming the level of service to increase profit should not be an option.

I wasn't thinking of that, but it's possible, I was thinking more of people who thought nobody would care what an airline had done but have now seen that they are interested.

More likely folk will be emboldened to go public with their horror stories, no matter which airline it was with.

To Do List: 1. Buy 4 Pigs 2. Paint numbers 1, 2, 3 & 5 on their backs 3. Release them at the mall 4. Sit back & watch Security search for No. 4. Source

To Do List: 1. Buy 4 Pigs 2. Paint numbers 1, 2, 3 & 5 on their backs 3. Release them at the mall 4. Sit back & watch Security search for No. 4. Source

And sitting between a couple who were having a domestic dispute and wouldn't sit together!! Bumped because of a 'higher priority passenger' FFS. If I recall correctly he was a mutual fund manager, so not some pleb.

With a bit of luck the airlines (not just United, but all of them) will have come to the conclusion that the time for involuntary denial of passage ends when the customer steps onto the aeroplane. By all means deny boarding before then, but thereafter it should only be voluntary, however much that costs them. If they haven't worked out that they need the seats before the pax board, too bad.

I think I read that it was based in part on the fare paid and the passengers' frequent flyer status.

Exactly. The RTW ticket is the sort of thing that is seen here as a major offer, other types of offers might have more resonance in the US. Tickets and travel vouchers effectively cost the airline nothing (unless they happen to be used on a flight that was full). United have to be brain-dead (or at least tone-deaf) not to realise that flying home on the last flight on a Sunday night passengers are less likely to volunteer to give up their seats than on almost any other flight you can think of. By way of contrast, if I were offered money to be offloaded on a midday Qantas flight from Sydney to Melbourne when I knew there was another flight in 15 or 30 minutes (which there would be on that route) it would take me under a nanosecond to accept.

This was discussed on the ABC late afternoon news-panel show today, and there was universal agreement that 'Offer more' was the answer. As one of them said, there would have been at least one person who would say, 'Yeah, I'll take the round-the-world ticket'.

Ah, I thought you wanted me to write a review now. I could, 'Sweet, loves to insert tab A into slot B' and so on, but that would be hypothecical. The sooner I can write a well informed review, the better.

Steady on, I haven't met him yet. And I mean 'yet'.

I know he is, and I have chatted with him. He's a lovely guy. Can't wait!

@Russ is so hot. I need to go to NYC.

I have only one Uber experience, in the Jan 16 snowstorm in DC, where a hotel staffer booked me a Uber to the airport. I remain concerned that she was actually charged more than I paid, given the circumstances. (I didn't have a smart phone.)

Not your typical funny. Lisa Wilkinson, who with some dude presents one of the breakfast TV shows here, was called out by the 'Daily Mail' for wearing the same blouse twice in four months! The response is priceless. http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/morning-shows/lisa-wilkinson-delivers-the-perfect-response-to-fashion-critics-on-live-tv/news-story/fa6757e4d1240cb6f261c43ce7974a32 The 'some dude' actually has a name, he is Karl Stefanovic. He wore the same suit every day for a year — and no one noticed.

I had one of those delightful five second 'Yeah so what' moments before the unintended meaning of 'Drag and drop' hit me. (Now cleaning coffee from keyboard.)

The Economist's take on this: http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21720580-ugly-incident-provokes-social-media-storm-passenger-dragged-united-airlines?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/airrageapassengerisdraggedfromaunitedairlinesplane 'Not long before United released Mr Munoz’s statement about the bloodied passenger on Facebook, it had posted a picture of a company dog nuzzling a young boy, part of a programme to make travel less stressful. Travellers will be telling a story about United for some time. It won’t be the one about the puppies.'

If Twitter this past week were a person, here he is:

Nope, not a dud. In case it wasn't clear from the rest of the thread, Oliver and I were experimenting to see whether the 'Your profile is invisible when visiting other profiles' button on RM worked, and it does.

I think what is displayed in both rentmen.com and rent.men is drawn from the same data set, so it would invariably show up as the same information. Happy to be corrected. One or other may hide some information depending on where you are viewing it from.